White As Night, or Guilty Innocence
by Queen of Mordor
Summary: A sequel to my fic The Tale of Eilinel (you won't understand if you haven't read it!). Eilinel hasn't told everything yet...


**WHITE AS NIGHT, OR GUILTY INNOCENCE**

Category: Angst/Darkfic, Drama, Romance

Rating: **PG-13**

Warnings: Eilinel / Sauron, Sauron / Thuringwethil. Nothing explicit at all, don't worry. Barf bag not needed! It's only PG-13!

Summary: A sequel to The Tale Of Eilinel (you won't understand if you haven't read it!). No, she hasn't told everything yet! And she's not the only one who has something to say!

Eilinel's and Thuringwethil's POV (alternatively).

After having spent ages lying (and not only about innocent things, believe me), it becomes a habit, and you may well lie even to yourself. I didn't lie while telling my "whole" story, but I did hide some "details". Now I have to be able to tell the entire truth, for I am, at last, leaving Middle-Earth for the Halls of Mandos, where, maybe, some people are still waiting for me.

I've always needed to respect or to admire someone to be able to love him, or even to like him. I used to feel superior to everyone, but the closest thing to respect or admiration in my life was my fear of my parents. My parents, that I didn't admire or respect, but feared and liked so much. After their deaths, I had been (un)lucky enough to find two other people to fear – but with good reason this time. People so beautiful and powerful that I admired and respected them terribly, even if they weren't admirable at all, and even less respectable. 

"I must please them, or I will be locked up in a dark cell again, away from everything, away from _them_.", I thought.

Betraying my husband wasn't such a great thing after all, if it could make them smile to me.

*                          *                          *

How could I forget? She looked so innocent. She _was_ so innocent, even though she thought she was  corrupted. Being surrounded by evil didn't seem to make her change. Had she done as many evil deeds as I had, she would still look pure.  And who says the way you look isn't important? I wouldn't like my face to look like my soul, for everything is appearance. What would I look like if it wasn't? What would my Lord look like?

As I've said, she looked young and pure. That kind of personality is the most attractive to people like me – or like him. 

It seemed that Lord Sauron was only interested in her because of her innocent soul, so tempting to taint, and nothing more. He had me for _the rest_, after all. But again, everything is appearance. And appearances are deceptive. 

*                          *                          *

Appearances are deceptive. Looking at my reflection in the mirror every day taught me they are, for this young girl with this seemingly permanent avid-to-please smile and these happy-and-trustful-looking eyes isn't me. She is my parents' daughter, my husband's wife, but she is not me. Merely the part I've been playing all my life.

But _they_ know the real me. He, at least, does for sure. He would already have killed me if he didn't.

And her… As soon as I saw her, I knew that she was exactly what I wanted to be. She was beautiful in a dark and mysterious way while I looked, at least to my mind, like a healthy and plump peasant with red cheeks. She was elegant and richly clothed. My old dress, my stupid hairdo made me feel ugly like an orc compared to her. How jealous I was! I would have hated her if she hasn't been so perfect! For even her name was perfect. Thuringwethil sounds better than Eilinel, doesn't it? 

She had been good to me though, giving me water and taking care of me like a mother, after I had spent so much time slowly dying in my cell. She almost got in trouble because she cared to much, and Sauron didn't like sentimentalism.

"Out of this room. What part of it don't you understand, Thuringwethil?", I remember him saying.

But there was no need to talk to her like that. I know that she would have killed me without any hesitation or regret if he had told her to. Not surprising, after all my mother herself told me one day that she liked my father better than me. 

My husband Gorlim used to say that kissing someone was like sharing your soul with him, and maybe even becoming one person only. So I thought I would happily exchange centuries of motherly love for one kiss from the oh so perfect Thuringwethil.

*                          *                          *

Perhaps the fairest thing to do would have been killing her. It would have been better for everyone. Someone should have ended this madness. I thought about doing it countless times, but I never showed it, so she probably never knew. I never talked about it to Lord Sauron; he would have laughed at me and said I was being jealous.

But what if I was? She was everything I used to be - but wasn't anymore - : pure, full of life, young (for young-looking isn't quite the same as young). She probably found everything surprising and marvellous. Nothing was new to me, I was bored and jaded. Lord Melkor's victories and defeats didn't really affect me anymore. My life was a routine in itself. Travelling in a world I knew by heart to bring more or less interesting and useful messages to and from my Lord. Doing the same things, seeing the same people, years after years, centuries after centuries, millennia after millennia.

When I wasn't travelling, I had to find solutions to prevent absurd and foolish fights between Lord Sauron's courtiers from happening, but the solutions never worked, and so I was the one he blamed for most of the discipline problems. 

_Me_! He knew it was unfair, but he just didn't care. It was so easy to yell at me when things didn't turn out like he wanted them to! Of course such things couldn't take place in front of anyone, for he cared a lot about what people thought of him and the way people saw him. So I had the great "privilege" of seeing him losing his temper and swearing as elegantly as an orc. Obviously he knew better than anyone else how faithful and obedient I was. He knew that I always did _everything_ he wanted me to do. And he knew that nothing could kill the admiration I had for him.

Kissing Eilinel made me remember memories that darkness had hidden from me so long ago. At that time the sun shone brighter and I didn't know how to lie. Kissing her made me feel what it felt to be a mortal, fearing death day after day, too tired to enjoy life but too afraid to leave it. 

What a strange thing it was to be waiting for a dearly loved husband I didn't even know to come back home, staring through the window! I would have called it a waste of time if that mix of hope and fear wasn't so intoxicating. How strange it was to discover that I hadn't experienced every feeling yet, even after thousands and thousands of years. Strange, but true: I never stood in front of a window, wondering where the man I loved was, for even before meeting Lord Melkor I felt superior to everyone - and loved none. The closest thing to this feeling I had ever experienced was a strange sensation in my stomach (something feeling like apprehension or impatience, or maybe both), after having this orc knocking at my door at night, and saying: "The master wants you. . . errrr, wants you to go to his apartments, hehehe!". 

It was always the same foolish joke. But he wouldn't have dared laugh at me if it had _only_ been a foolish joke. . .

*                          *                          *

One day she put something in my wine. A lot of "something". It was the first time in years I had wine, but I could taste that it wasn't "normal" wine. Or at least, it wasn't anymore. Of course I asked her about it, but she didn't answer, so I asked again and again. I was feeling less and less right, and wanted to know why my head turned like that.

"Stop speaking", she told me after I had asked several times.

I was going to say that I wasn't going to, when she grabbed my arm and made me turn so that I was in front of her.

"Do you want to know the truth? Here it is!", she said. And then she kissed me.

I saw Morgoth, Sauron, and battles. I saw blood and tears and laughter. I saw myself with her eyes, young and pure, while she saw herself with mine, mysterious and powerful. 

Finally, I saw the reason of that thing in my wine. 

Did I see it with her eyes? Did I see it with mine? I don't know. But when the laughing orc knocked at my door, not changing a single word to his sentence, some time after she had stopped kissing me and abruptly left the room without a word – without even looking at me - , I knew what I had to do, and I did it.

Both Sauron and Thuringwethil had had what they wanted from me. I died the day after, a dagger in my heart, my last words proving that I gave it to them willingly. 


End file.
